Memories Lost
by Zoe Nightshade
Summary: As Nico remembers his past, he wonders: What is the point of being alive if when you die, which every mortal must, every dream or memory you ever had is lost forever?
1. Chapter 1

"Dark" was pretty much the only word that could describe Nico di Angelo. Mortals would sometimes comment on how he felt like the Underworld. What he could not tell them was that he was the Underworld. Well, the son of the Underworld; okay, the son of the Underworld god. Still, with a personality like his, Nico didn't get along living among the living. People there simply did not understand his dark, lonely, existence. That's why he preferred to go on living in the Underworld with his father, the king.

Now that the Titan War II was over, Nico was treated more like a son than ever.

Usually, Nico would help his father with his work; well, at least he would walk around with him and _watch _his father do his work, bothering him as he checked on Cerberus, the three headed dog, told Charon that no, he could not have a raise, and made sure that the dead were happy, and the dead in the Fields of Punishment were unhappy. It was a bit of a depressing job, though, so Hades let his son talk to him. Even though Nico was a dark boy as a son of the lord of the dead, he did have his mother's more-cheerful-than-Hades side.

Other times, he would do jobs that he didn't like so much. One of his least favorite jobs was helping his stepmother, Persephone, weed her garden even though the disgruntled goddess knew very well that her garden could be weeded in the blink of an eye with the flick of her hand. Persephone had agreed not to dispose of Nico, but that didn't mean she wanted him around. She'd gotten better, but she still got the look of disappointment, disapproval, and disgust whenever the twelve-year-old demigod entered her sight.

Nico's life down in the Underworld consisted of three main things: "Helping" his father with his work, being Persephone's slave, and training with the dead. Sometimes, when he wasn't with his father, Nico would just go to the line of dead people waiting to be judged and chat. Hades, however, discouraged that activity because every once and a while, Nico would become one of the dead people's good friends and beg his father to let them go to Elysium. Most mortal kids would probably think that being a prince of the Underworld would be fun because you could hang out with all the dead people who had been good and were in Elysium, but it was very rare that Nico was allowed to go to Elysium. It was considered a special treat, only given on those once in a lifetime days that seemed to be drearier than normal.

December 18 was one of those days. It was just a few days before the beginning of Winter. Persephone usually came on Winter solstice, but remembering how long it took his wife to unpack the year before, Hades asked her to come a few days earlier. Nico had been in Hades' hair all morning, in a good, but annoying way, and knowing that Persephone would not want to see her husband's mortal son, the god sent him to Elysium to mingle with the past souls.

Nico enjoyed going to Elysium. He usually talked to his sister, Bianca, and his mother, Maria di Angelo, but he also liked hearing stories from other souls of former Presidents, Kings, and all sorts of people. Elysium was a fun place, but not when one of the dead souls started on one of their, _"Oh, when I was alive..." _or _"You kids living now are so spoiled! When I was living..." _and Nico would never forget.

Just because they were in Elysium didn't mean that they were not annoying. Visiting Elysium was not unlike visiting your grandmother's retirement home. Basically, some of them were just like a bunch of regular old people, but in much better shape.

He could not wait to see his sister and his mother again. Although he never knew his mother, and rarely saw her, she was his mother, and he loved her even though she was practically a stranger to him. It was complicated. Bianca knew their mother much better than Nico because both of them were in Elysium. Nico sometimes envied them. Both Bianca and Maria di Angelo had been given the most dreaded punishment in the eyes of mortal man: death. And yet they were happier than anyone, especially any half-blood, ever would be. They lived in a place that was not unlike Camp Half-Blood. There were grassy fields with all sorts of plants and trees that bore fruit, and behind, forest, as far as the eye could see. Bianca lived with her and Nico's mother in a beautiful house. It wasn't the castle by the River Styx Hades had wanted to build for his mortal wife, but Maria liked it, as did Bianca. It was perfect; not to big, and not to little.

When he was young, Nico's mother was killed by Zeus (long story). Hades had loved his mortal wife, but could not keep the children, whom he loved as well. To keep them safe from Zeus's wrath, the god put them in the Lotus Casino (an even longer story) until they were eventually taken out by one of his furies. The reason, Nico suspected, was probably because he did not want a son of Poseidon to be the hero. He wanted one of his children to be the hero. But before he put Bianca and Nico in the Lotus Casino Hotel, Hades had them dipped in the River Lethe, so they would not remember anything. When they came out of the hotel, although they knew how to talk, and walk, and do all those basic things, they didn't remember their past, or their mother.

It was hard for Nico to remember what had happened from the day he came out of the hotel, and on. There was that lawyer, the car ride, Westover Hall, then a lot of school, then these strange kids, oh, they were all a bunch of little stories in Nico's brain like puzzle pieces, waiting to be put together. He would need to think long and hard to remember and relive it all.

_Let's see, _Nico thought as he walked towards the gates of Elysium, gleaming in the distance. _It all started in the hotel, that day when Bianca got that telephone call..._


	2. Chapter 2

"Bianca?" Nico yelled, knocking furiously on the bathroom door. "Bianca, the phone!"

A girl came out of the humungous bathroom with a toothbrush in her hand.

"Huh?" she said.

"It's the phone," her little brother repeated impatiently. "It's ringing! Pick it up!"

Nico and Bianca di Angelo played games. That was their life. They got up, had breakfast, and played games. They didn't remember much before that although in the back of their seemingly young minds, was a lost memory of a a boarding school in Washington D.C., car ride, a lawyer...it was all kind of confusing. The brother and sister lived in room #6204, a huge suite in the Lotus Hotel and Casino. Bianca and Nico didn't know how long they had been there, but this life was all they knew, and that phone, as far as they knew, had never rung.

_Ring, ring!_

"Come on," Nico pleaded. "Pick it up."

Although only two years older, Bianca was the leader of the two, and even though she only appeared to be ten - almost eleven - she took the mother figure in their little family.

"Hello?" she answered. "Umm...yes, I am."

"Who is it?" Nico whispered loudly.

"Shut up!" Bianca said. "Oh, not you sir, sorry. It's just my little brother - yes, his name is 'Nico'. How did you know?"

"Bianca, what's happening?"

Bianca mouthed "shut up" and turned back to the telephone.

"Coming up to our room? Now?" the girl said, bewildered. "You mean, right, right, right now? What for? Oh, okay. I see." Bianca's eyes widened. She whispered, "We need to leave?"

"Leave?" Nico yelled. "I haven't finished level one hundred eighty in Bone Breaker 3000!"

"Shut up, Nico!" Bianca yelled. She turned back to the phone. "Our parents? But where will we go? Okay, yes sir. We're in room-"

Bianca looked puzzled. "Yes, you're right. We _are _in room #6204."

She put down the phone. Who was this creeper? Leave? Why? She and her little brother had been there for only a...short time, right? Bianca had almost forgotten there was a world other than the hotel.

"Who was that?" Nico asked. "What do you mean we're leaving? Why do we need to? What were they talking about our parents? How-"

"Nico!" Bianca screamed, trying to stay calm at the same time. "Listen, it's a lawyer. He says that it's time to leave here. He'll explain everything when he gets up here, okay?"

Still not satisfied, Nico sat down on his bed.

"Okay."

Minutes later, there was a knock on the door. Nico was like a puppy when a stranger rings the doorbell. He ran straight to it silently begging his sister to open it. Bianca was a bit confused, but she opened it.

At the door stood a middle aged man with a briefcase. He had a weird style of suit on; not the style Nico and Bianca usually saw people wearing, but then again, people had weird fashion it that hotel. The new kids had the strangest sense of fashion, not that the di Angelos actually met them.

Bianca cleared her throat.

"Hello," she said.

The man smiled coldly.

"Good afternoon," he said. "May I come in?"

"Oh, oh, yes, sir," Bianca said, still startled and confused. "Come right in."

The strange man shook her hand, sat on a bed, and opened his brief case.

"I understand you are short your parents?"

"Shorter than them?" Nico asked. Bianca gave him a small punch and mouthed, _Let me handle this_.

"Uh, yes," Bianca told him. "We're orphans, I guess."

She didn't recall ever having parents.

"Tell me how you came here."

Bianca thought for a while. Came there? To the hotel? She didn't remember that. She knew she and Nico hadn't been there for a long time, but she didn't really remember anything before that. Nico pulled on her sleeve. She nodded.

"Didn't some lawyer take us from school?" he whispered loudly. Immediately, Bianca remembered. She and Nico had gone to some boarding school...and then a lawyer came and drove to the hotel.

"A lawyer came, he-"

"Took you from school," the man said. "Yes, I heard. Can you expand on that?"

"Well, not really. I-" Bianca started. "Well, who are you anyway?"

"I am a lawyer as well," the man said holding out his hand for Bianca to shake. "Ben Janderson. You've been in here long enough. It's time to leave."

"Leave?" Nico jumped up from his awkward position, squished between his sister's elbow and the wall. "Why?"

"Nico!" Bianca turned to her brother.

"_Anyway_," the lawyer said impatiently, "there are some legal issues I must resolve first."

He took out some papers, and handed Bianca a pink sheet with the word, "di Angelo" at the top.

"Ew!" Nico made a face. "That's _pink_!"

The lawyer let out an angry sigh, like he wanted to pounce on this annoying little boy and rip him to shreds. He took something out of his pocket. Expecting a knife of some kind, Nico cringed, but instead, he was handed a pack of cards.

"Myth-o-Magic," Nico read. The lawyer nodded.

"It's a game. Why don't you go over there and play it while I talk to your sister."

"Okay." Nico got up and went over to the corner of the room that the lawyer was pointing to, and started looking at the cards while the lawyer talked to Bianca about legal issues like child custody, and other stuff Nico didn't get.

He looked at the top card. It was some guy with a lightning bolt in his hand apparently called "Zeus." Underneath his picture, it said:

_Zeus is the king of the gods, and of thunder and lightning._

_50 hit_

_10,000 attack_

_+ 500 movement if taking an Olympian_

The next card was Zeus's lightning bolt.

"Awesome," Nico whispered to himself. Zeus's lightning bolt had 600 damage points. "Take any card this card beats," he read under his breath.

After reading and memorizing every card in the deck, Nico set up a game, laying out the cards as shown in the bottom card, which was a "How to Play" card. He played against himself since he had no one else to play with. Of course, that ended up not working because Nico ended up siding with one of his sides, and so, obviously, that side won.

"Bianca," he said. He was about to ask her to play with him, but then he remembered she was with the lawyer. He had almost forgotten about that guy being there in the hotel room.

She looked over.

"What is it?"

Since he didn't want to say that he called her name just because he wanted to play with her, he said, "So what are you doing?"

"Signing papers," said the lawyer. "I need you to sign as well in a minute."

"Not the pink one, I hope?" Nico muttered. Bianca rolled her eyes.

About a half an hour later, both di Angelo had signed the papers without reading, and were led out of the Lotus Hotel and Casino for the first time in what they thought had been weeks. It was weird. The second they stepped out of the front yard of the Hotel, memories came back. Nico and Bianca had been going to some boarding school, and then some lawyer - not this one, a different one - had come to take them to...this place, the Lotus Casino and Hotel. But how long had they been there?

The lawyer wasted no time. He practically threw both children into the back seat of his car, a weird shiny machine that looked like a contraption of the future and went really fast, and told them that he was going to drive them to some school in Maine.

"But sir," Bianca said. "We can't pay for school."

"Not true," the lawyer said. "Your late parents left you quite a bit of money left in my care. But don't worry, it will be used only for your own good."

Nico didn't really remember what happened after that. He was engrossed in his Myth-o-Magic cards while Bianca just sat there, bewildered.

-

_That car ride,_ Nico remembered, _was extremely short. I fell asleep, but I remember Bianca told me that it should have taken longer to get from Las Vegas to Westover._

As he approached the gates of Elysium, he remembered for the millionth time how much he needed his sister around; how much he missed her. A dozen ghosts stood by the gates, guarding. Elysium was guarded by ghosts of people from the Fields of Asphodel who volunteered since it didn't need a real guard that badly. All of the dipped their heads to the son of their lord as he passed by. Nico simply nodded at them in respect.

Immediately, he ran through the fields to the house where his mother and Bianca lived, and was greeted with a warm hug from his sister and an warm, but awkward one from his mother. Mother-son gestures like hugs or "I love you"s were always awkward since although Maria di Angelo had known and loved her son, Nico had no memory of her when she was alive.

"I can't believe he let you visit!" Bianca exclaimed. "He _never_ lets you come to Elysium!"

Bianca was, to Nico's relief, dressed in regular clothes - pants and a black T-shirt with the word "freedom" on it - instead of the clothes she had on when she died, her hunter's uniform.

"Persephone's coming and he wants me out of the way, I guess," Nico said, immediately noticing a split second of discomfort on his mother's face at the mention of Hades' immortal wife. She smiled nicely though.

"Come in the house," she said motioning for him to come inside.

When they were inside, Nico and Bianca sat on the sofa in the room that should have been the TV room if Maria di Angelo had wanted a television set. Hades offered her a big plasma TV, but since she had lived in the days when television had only just been invented, she turned it down. Bianca didn't mind. She lived for a short time in the 1930's, and her time in the twenty first century was short, with little chance for watching television.

Maria came in and sat beside her two children with a tray of spaghetti for Bianca and a double cheeseburger for Nico.

"Thanks," they both said.

Visiting his mother and sister was a extremely rare treat only reserved for the son of the lord of the dead, so whenever he was so fortunate, Nico tried to make it as happy as he could.

"Look at this," Nico said, taking out a picture.

"Isn't that Apollo's chariot?" Bianca asked.

"It's the kind of car it was disguised as," he said. "A red Maserati Spyder! That's the kind of car I want when I'm older."

There was an awkward silence.

"Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to-" Nico started as the thought dawned on him that his sister _wouldn't _be older.

"Nice," Bianca said.

"So much different from what I used to see," Maria said. "And what you two used to see, not that you remember."

"It looks more like a...spaceship," Bianca said. She found it hard imagining her little brother driving that monster.

"Father said that he would rather see me driving a black one, but this is the kind Lord Apollo drives! Cool, huh?"

Bianca and Maria both nodded.

As the hours passed, the small family talked like any other family; about politics, although there was some dispute when it came to the subject of which era of politics to talk about, 1930's or current, they talked about sports, well, Nico did; Bianca and Maria listened, confused, and Nico told his mother and sister about the world above, and the Underworld. It was just like any other family would talk until, however, they got to the subject of the Lotus Casino.


End file.
